I first hatched out some Brassy Backs in 1996, entirely by accident. They were out of the same line as the BBReds. I'd never ever heard of Brassy Back then! But I went ahead and started working with them, and it's been a line of consistently very good birds, though I don't raise them in large numbers. In 1997 I bought Blue Rosecombs to try to breed Blue Reds. The Blue Reds never amounted to much but I also bred the Blues to the Brassy Backs and developed Blue Brassy Backs. I now raise them all out of one breeding pen. Brassy X Blue Brassy will produce 50% of each color. These are both non-standard colors (not in the APA or ABA Standard) so although I do show them, they can't win anything beyond Best of Variety. More than once I've had judges tell me that these birds would otherwise win the class if it wasn't for that restriction! Since there is not a lot of interest in non-standard colors, I keep a very small number of these birds and don't raise very many. I just like them.